Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: San Jose Mercury Strikes Again Message-ID: <11328@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 24 Aug 90 07:09:34 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 45 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 594, Message 1 of 7 Several months ago, I related the story of the {San Jose Mercury News'} telemarketing boiler room and its calls to my ten home phone lines on a semi-regular basis. After speaking with the president of the telemarketing firm, I was led to believe that there would be no further calls. Not true. Last Monday evening at 7:40 PM, they hit again. When the first call came in, I tried to explain to the person that I had many lines in the hundreds group and would appreciate it if they could refrain from calling them. I was hung up on. Then, for the next thirty minutes, I went through modem hell. The next day, I called the president of the boiler room company as well as head of marketing for the {San Jose Mercury}. I posed this question: What would you do if every so often someone called you at home at various times of the day, disturbing your sleep, your dinner, and your work? In addition, they called all of your computer modem lines, wreaking havoc? And they continued to do this in spite of the fact that you had repeatedly asked them to stop and you had cooperated with them to the point of revealing all of the unlisted numbers to them for the purpose of having them not dialed inadvertantly? I told them that I considered this to be telephone harrasment. Then I asked for a good reason for me not to turn the matter over to my attorney for civil action. The reason one of them gave was, "This is a major telemarketing effort. It is virtually impossible to guarantee that some specific numbers won't be called in light of how many automated calls are made each day." Translation: Your telephone tranquility and privacy, Mr. Higdon, is secondary to the larger picture of telemarketing and commerce. My response was that I viewed the situation in reverse. My peace and privacy would prevail over their entire operation, if necessary. If I had to shut them down to keep from getting further calls, that's what I would do. Where did we leave it? They will block the entire 723 prefix from their machine until they figure out how to REALLY block individual numbers. (I guess all the previous conversations were just pissing in the wind; they never were able to block as they had claimed.) If the calls stop, that's just fine. Now when they call my 266 number... John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !